


Take a gamble on your heart

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [58]
Category: Glee
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 17:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13839567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: After struggling with rules and some form of balance, Leo, Blaine and Cody live now in perfect harmony. Until Cody makes the revelation that turns Leo's world upside down again, and consequently Blaine's.





	Take a gamble on your heart

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a what if from the original 'verse. In the canon course of events that followed the beginning of Broken Heart Syndrome, this has never happened.  
>  Specifically, this is a a sub-branch of the main canon 'verse branch (if you're familiar with the tree-structure of the many 'verses composing this saga) in which Cody and Vince's marriage ended, and Cody ended up living with Leo and Blaine. He started a proper relationship with the first with permission from the latter, who's more than just an observing part in it, but this is not the time nor place to discuss these details.  
> Fact is, the three live together in this relationship for two years, more or less, making it official, with great disappointment from Timmy, who, square as he is, can't understand his fathers' semi-open relationship.  
> Here is when the first big change in their ménage à trois is about to happen.
> 
> prompt: revelation

Two years ago Leo was sitting on this very same couch, listening to Blaine as he revised with them _the rules_ , namely the list of things he and Cody were always allowed to do, the list of things they were allowed only under certain circumstances, and the list of things they were not allowed in any case whatsoever. Basically the first version of the rules they are following with a few changes now.

At the time, the mess had just been made. Cody was staying over at their house – not exactly _living_ with them yet – because Vince had packed a suitcase for him and had literally thrown Cody out of the house without so much of a word, after discovering that Cody and Leo were having an affair, and that Blaine knew about it and was even regulating it.

The first few months had been weird, to say the least. Leo had his lover staying at his house with his husband and children, and he was allowed to make out with him – which means he did and a lot – whenever he felt like it, with the only condition that the twins shouldn't be present. The result was that he kissed Cody whenever he was free to do so, sometimes when Blaine was there, which led to Blaine being present to their groping each other an awful amount of times, which in turn blurred the already blurred lines of the relationship between all three of them.

Eventually, things turned out way better than expected. Actually, they went extraordinary well if you think that what happened would have completely destroyed a slightly less crazy marriage – in fact, it destroyed Cody's, but that it's something Leo never really thinks about.

For quite a long time he liked Vince a lot. Vince was a nice, handsome and funny guy – nothing to say about that – but when push came to shove, that is when it came down to either having Cody for himself or leaving him to Vince, Leo had no hesitations.

He kept Cody because Cody has always belonged to him – even _during_ his marriage – so when the chance of having him back without losing anything else came around, he took it. In fact, there was nothing to _take_ at all. To him, it was the natural order of things. As long as Cody had wanted to be with Vince, that was okay. But the moment he had showed that he wanted Leo as much as Leo wanted him, Vince stopped being a factor all together.

Besides, after Cody began to talk, telling him how his relationship with his husband was on a sexual level, Leo was quick to label him inadequate to take care of Cody. Vince was the most loving and caring husband, surely way more giving and unselfish than Leo ever was or ever will be – Leo never denied that – but he was convinced Cody was some sort of angelic creature in the purest of forms, or something equally absurd, and acted consequently, reducing sex to the most boring act ever conceived by human mind. Cody might be shy and easily upset, but he's not chaste; he's fierce in his wanting, and he's got the same desires, the same cravings, that Leo himself has. And he knows that very well because he contributed to make him so.

Now, Leo knows that Cody was happy with Vince, of course, he's not stupid and he's not blind. He doesn't believe that he came in and swept him off his feet with the sheer power of his sexual experience, especially because Blaine's rules don't allow him to have sex with him. Also, he knows that nothing would have ever happened if it was just sex, because Cody wasn't looking for that outside his marriage.

It happened because it's them and because of what they left open between them when Blaine came back to Leo more than twenty years ago and forced him to break up with Cody, a thing he ultimately didn't want to do. But Leo is well aware that, not on everything, but on certain levels, he knows Cody's needs way better than Vince ever did. And he's bad enough to bask in the notion.

Anyway, two years and three different sets of rules later – they needed a little tuning – their situation is weird, but stable. Cody lives with them permanently. He's got a studio apartment downtown, where he spends a couple of days a week, but he mostly stays with them. He and Leo are basically boyfriends, even if the word is used very very carefully, and they do everything they can every time they can; and lately Blaine has been joining their fun more often. The twins got used to Cody's presence, even if they don't know what's going on yet, and everybody is happy – except for Timmy, who disapproves of his fathers' choices so much that he doesn't take a step inside the house if Cody is inside, and he also hates him with such fury that, if his words were weapons, Cody would be surely dead by now. But that's a problem Blaine is slowly trying to solve.

Other than that, everything is perfectly fine.

That is why Leo got pretty nervous when Cody told him that _they need to talk_. As he has lived these two years knowing that they were too good to be true, now he can't help but think that this is it, this is the time when everything goes south and he can't do nothing about it.

*

Cody wanted to give Leo the news in a neutral place, like a restaurant or a bar, but Blaine talked him out of it and now that he sees how nervous Leo is, he knows Blaine was right.

When Leo is upset for something, he does one of three things. He either starts biting his nails, torment the hair on the back of his neck or he cooks. And right now, he's got basically no nails anymore, his hair is a mess and there are three bowls with three different kind of chocolate chip cookies between them on the coffee table. Cody knows that forcing him to be in a public place when he's like this would have been a disaster – because nerves in Leo always lead to shouting and screaming – so he mentally thanks Blaine for being wise, as usual, and helping him set this conversation here, in the living room.

“What's going on?” 

The question literally erupts from Leo's lips as if he had kept it inside until now and he couldn't keep it any longer. Cody tenses, suddenly reevaluating the whole idea. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe the whole thing was and he can just call it off. He's still in time, after all. “Nothing,” he murmurs, looking down at his hands in his lap.

He doesn't need to see him to know that Leo is shifting awkwardly. “So, what do we have to talk about?” Leo insists and his voice is nervous like the rest of him, but that's an edge of anger to it, something that says _if I don't like what you say, there's going to be consequences_.

Cody feels the sudden urge to disappear. He doesn't want to speak anymore, but he can't find the strength to get up and leave either. “Baby, calm down,” Blaine intervenes, sitting down next to his husband and placing a hand on his shoulder. “Cody has something to tell you and you should listen to him.”

Leo suddenly realizes something, and that sets him off. “So you know what this is all about. And if you know and I don't, it means it's bad.”

“No, it's nothing like that,” Blaine says, and his voice remains calm and steady. Cody sees him tensing tho, preparing to take on himself all the fury of the storm ahead. “Just listen, alright?”

“Cody, please, just talk!” Leo says, unnerved.

“I'm seeing someone.”

He only whispered but his words just hang in the air, echoing as if he had screamed. The silence that follows is heavy and ominous. Cody doesn't dare to look up but he feels Leo's eyes on him, burning through his skin and he knows – he just knows – that Blaine's presence won't save him from anything. He shouldn't have talked. No, he shouldn't have done anything. And most of all, he shouldn't have started with those three words.

“You're what?” There's no nervousness in his voice, just plain anger.

“Leo...”

“Who?” Leo raises his voice and stands up, and Cody just back off on the couch. He wants to run upstairs but he knows that it would make things worse, so he stays but he's already shaking. And this triggers him in a way that he hadn't anticipated. “Who?” Leo screams louder.

“Leonard! Stop, now!” Blaine stands up too and reaches calmly for him. He acts like he's not even holding him, but he keeps his fingers firmly around his arm, ready to tighten his grip if his husband moves.

“No! Now he tells me who the fuck is it!”  
Cody doesn't answer right away. He doesn't even try to speak because he knows his voice would come out broken and shaking. He had hoped that they could discuss this, that he could explain what happened, but he sees that they are already past that now and he doesn't know what to do. If he answers, it's only because he feels the tension raising – like temperature – in the room. He knows Leo is about to scream again and he can't deal with it. “His name is Levi,” he murmurs. “He's a comic artist and I met him at the book fair four months ago.”

There, it's done. He said everything. There's nothing else he could say about Levi, nothing Leo would be interested to know at this point, anyway. Like, how they randomly met because Cody was attending the presentation of Levi's latest graphic novel without knowing who he was, and Levi was sitting right next to him, pretending to be part of the crowd. How Levi convinced him to go out for a coffee by making him laugh. How he manages to put him at ease the same way Leo does when he's not so angry. They have so much in common and Cody is sure they would get along if only—If only Leo wasn't looking at him as he had betrayed him in the most horrible way.

“Four months ago? Are you even serious right now?” His rage raises like a wave and breaks the riverbanks of Blaine's arms to rain down on Cody. “And when did you want to tell me? No, wait! Did you _want_ to tell me at all? Or something forced your hand? Which one is it?”

“No! I swear, I wanted to tell you!” Cody says. “I was just waiting for the right moment.”

“Which was now? Four months after you met him?” Leo stops for a moment, his features change again as he frowns. “Did he fuck you?”

“Leo!” Blaine's outraged voice seems to come from a thousands miles away but he's right there, just outside the limits of this living thing between them that keeps him out this time, instead of pulling him in.

Cody swallows as he torments his fingers. “I waited to tell you because I wanted to understand if it was something serious.”

Leo lets out a low, frustrated growl. “Answer the question, Cody! Did he fuck you?”

Cody knows that as long as he doesn't answer that questions things can still be mended, and that as soon as he does, there's no way to predict how Leo will react. But he can't lie, because he doesn't want to and because it would be even worse. It happened once in four months, but he can't just pretend it didn't. So he nods.

“Oh, so it is something serious,” Leo snarls. “Or did it become serious because he fucked you? Did you decide to tell me because you had already opened your legs or what?”

“That's enough, Leonard!”

But Leo doesn't even look at him, and despite Blaine pushing him away from Cody and towards the stairs, he keeps staring at Cody with hatred. “Were you bored?” He asks. “Is that what this is? You were bored, so you found yourself someone who could entertain more than I'm allowed to do? 'Cause you knew it was going to be this way! I'm doing all I can!”

“I know! But I was alone!” Cody snaps, sad and frustrated. “There's two of you and I'm still _the other one_.”

Leo stops fighting Blaine, his face loses every expression. It becomes a mask. Even his rage seems to retreat behind the wall of his eyes. It flickers one last time and than it's gone. “Well, then,” he says. “I guess you're not anymore.”

Cody feels suddenly cold and empty. He doesn't know what those words mean but he doesn't ask because he's afraid of the answer. He watches Leo push Blaine away and run upstairs, and he starts to cry.

*

Blaine finds Leo in his office, where he usually hides when he doesn't want – or doesn't feel ready – to deal with something. But Blaine is not going to let him do that this time as he sometimes does. Leo is snuggled on the couch he keeps in there, under a blanket that was already old when Timmy was a baby and that he kept because it's the one Leo would wrap himself into when he was really sick back in the _bad days_. Leo tends to hold on to things that mean something to him and never let go of them. Everything that touches him deeply becomes a part of him and he can't get rid of it without losing a piece of himself. It happens with people too. It happened with Blaine, and it definitely happened with Cody.

He doesn't knock but he enters slowly in order to give him time to push him away. Leo never locks the door if he's in a room – an old rule Blaine gave him when he was sick and that became an habit to him – but Blaine would never barge in on him without asking him first some way or another.

“That was pretty offensive,” he says nonchalantly, taking a few steps inside and closing the door behind himself.

Leo doesn't turn to look at him. The only part of him that moves are his fingers as he plays some silly game on his phone. “I didn't call him names,” he says.

“It was offensive _towards me_ ,” Blaine clarifies, a little bit annoyed. “I was there, you know, while you were ignoring the fact that you have an husband to scream at your lover.”

Leo tenses a little. “I didn't mean to offend you,” he says. “But he told me he cheated on me, wasn't I supposed to get angry?”

“Like I did when I found you cheating on me with him?” Blaine asks softly, sitting down next to him. No matter how old he is, when it comes down to feelings, Leo is always a lost teenager unable to deal with them.

Leo remains very still for a moment, possibly remembering how Blaine never even screamed once at him after finding out he was having an affair with Cody, and he sighs. “You're right,” he says, and then he unwraps himself from the blanket only to wrap himself back around Blaine. “I shouldn't have acted like that.”

“How do you feel?”

Leo snorts, hiding his face in his neck. “How do you think I feel?” He retorts.

“I don't assume to know what you are feeling right now.”

“But you know. You always know,” Leo says. “So, go on. Tell me how do I feel and how should I feel instead.”

Blaine decides to let this one go. The kid is unnerved and he has already scolded him, so he can ignore his tone right now. “I think you feel betrayed and sad, because you had him all for yourself for two years and now you have to share him,” Blaine says, sighing.

Leo doesn't say anything for a while, which shows how painfully close Blaine went to describe his feelings right now. “This is just the beginning,” he says eventually. “So we might as well just stop it now.”

“The beginning of what?”

“You heard him, Blaine. He feels alone, so he found himself someone else.”

“Yes, for the times you can't be with him,” Blaine explains. “Can you blame him? I mean, the rules you have make it hard on you both but your situations are completely different.”

“He's not gonna stay now,” Leo goes on, almost as if Blaine hadn't even talked. “He's _seeing_ him now, next he'll move out to be with him and everything.”

Blaine can't help but laugh. “Baby, Cody divorced from his husband of twenty years just to be your lover. Do you really think he would break up with you now for someone he met four months ago?”

“Maybe he realized he doesn't want this,” Leo says, his voice ominous. 

Blaine strokes his hair and kisses him on the head. “Or maybe he just found someone who can fill the void you're forced to leave,” he insists. “Why don't you let Cody explain? I promise you, this is no weirder than anything we've done so far.”

“Is it now?” Leo arches an eyebrow.

“Believe me, it's not. And Cody never thought once of giving you up,” Blaine insists. “I will still have to share you and you don't see me angry.”

“That's different.”

Blaine kisses him on his forehead. “I know, don't worry,” he smiles. It's always funny how Leo feels the need to clarify the situation as if they both didn't know how it works between them. By dint of sharing his life with him, Blaine's brain is somewhat split too at this point, and what applies to Cody, doesn't necessarily apply to the two of them. Leo will have to share Cody, but Blaine has never shared him, only a part of him that wasn't his to share to begin with. “Just promise me you're gonna let him explain without assaulting him this time.”

Leo nods, slowly. Blaine knows that his husband is not sure he will be able to keep his promise, but he will try and that is as much as he can ask of him right now.

*

Blaine thought it was better to leave them alone – they always find their way to each other on their own after all – and, once he got the promise from Leo that he was not going to assault Cody, he went upstairs. It's awkward at first because Cody has stopped crying only a few moments ago and Leo has barely calmed down, so they seem to dance around each other as they come to sit on the couch.

“I'm really sorry for the way I reacted.” Leo is the first one to talk and he does that with the tiniest voice, not because he doesn't feel sorry but because he has hardly any control over himself right now and he uses himself carefully.

“I should have told you earlier and I should have found a better way to do it,” It's Cody's turn to apologize. “I just didn't know how.”

“Honestly, there wasn't a right way to do it. I hate the idea.”

Cody remains silent. He doesn't know if he should speak now, or even if Leo wants him to speak. He doesn't want to set him off again. That was never his plan. Eventually, Leo sighs and pulls his legs on the couch, stretching them and taking up almost all the space. Cody settles around him, filling the spaces he leaves empty for him as he always does. 

“Do you want to leave?” Leo ask. Him or the house, it's not clear but Cody knows that at this point the two things would be equally bad.

“No!” Cody looks up at him and stares right into his eyes. He never lies, Leo knows that, but even if he did, Leo could see that he's not lying right now by reading his face.

“You just want this guy.”

“I...” Cody hesitates and then goes for the truth again. “I don't know. I didn't plan to find anyone, but I like him and sometimes it's hard to, like, be with you because you are not mine.”

“I am.”

“You know what I mean,” Cody whispers.

Intellectually, Leo understands Cody's need to have someone to call his own. He's honest enough to admit that he could not live like Cody is doing, by sharing only a fraction of a man only half the time. Love for him is an immersive experience, he could not be satisfied with only crumbs. But he's never been a good person, and he's selfish when it comes to the people he loves, he knows that, and he doesn't like the idea of sharing Cody, especially with someone who could be with him the way he can't.

“What about him?” He asks, and it's clear that he doesn't really care about this guy. He's just perusing his cause. “Does he know about me?”

“Yes. I told him right away.” In fact, that had been the first condition Cody gave himself the moment he understood this thing with Levi was going somewhere. He was going to tell Levi about Leo and if he wasn't okay with that, then he would have called it off immediately. But Levi had simply said _okay_. “He knows everything and he is okay with it.”

“Yeah, right.” Leo snorts. There's no way this guy is okay with sharing Cody with him. One thing is Blaine, who knows the two of them, who had a hand in their breaking up to begin with, who is an exceptionally good husband and everything. The situation is different. It's way more likely that this guy said yes either because this story with Cody means nothing to him or because he's convinced he's going to take Cody away from him in no time.

“No, I swear, he really is okay with it,” Cody insists. “He only posed one condition.”

Leo arches an eyebrow. “Which is?”

Cody takes a deep breath, knowing that he's about to plunge in the deep sea of Leo's ability to refuse. “He wants to meet you.”

“No.” 

Leo's answer comes the moment Cody stops speaking, but he was ready for that and he insists, crawling closer to him, more out of enthusiasm than to put pressure on him. “Don't say no right away, please. Listen to me, let's just go out for a coffee with him. Ten minutes, fifteen tops, and then we can come back home right away.”

“I said no,” Leo shakes his head. “I don't care about him and I don't want to meet him.”

“He's a nice guy, I swear,” Cody goes on and he sounds like he has never wanted something more in his life than having these two men meet. “I'm sure you two would get along.”

“I don't want to get along with him!” Leo cries out, exasperated. “In fact, it's the last thing I want to do. I hate the guy already.”

Cody sighs and sits down, halfway on Leo's knees. “Don't you want to see what does he look like? If he's okay for me or not?” He finally says. His voice is warmer, it has the undertones of heavy thoughts and important things. “You know, if you thought that he's not right, I—“

“Don't,” Leo interrupts him. Cody blinks at him a couple of times quite puzzled, but Leo's face is suddenly so serious that he feels the need to be more serious too. “Don't give me that power because I will use it.”

This is probably the most honest thing Leo has ever said to him, and he will respect that by not using it to convince him. “I just want you to meet him,” he whispers. “I know it's hard for you, but I think that if you knew him, we could work this out in a way that will be at least okay for you too.”

This time Leo sighs and Cody takes it for the sign that he can get closer and kiss him. “I'm not leaving you,” he goes on, looking at him. “I don't want to leave you and you come first. That is why it's so important that you meet him. I don't want you scared of him because you don't have to be scared of anyone when it comes to me. I am yours.”

It takes Leo a lot to respond. First, he demands another kiss and another, until he's making out with him. “Ten minutes,” he eventually says, sucking at the skin of his neck. “One coffee, and then we come back home. We go there together, we come back together.”  
Cody tilts his head to give him more access and more skin to mark. “Only one coffee, I promise.”  
Looking up, he makes eye contact with Blaine and smiles. Blaine sighs and shakes his head, but he's smiling too as he retreats upstairs for a few more minutes.


End file.
